I Didn't Know There Was a "Wrong" Kind of Traffic!

Today I had a hub unfeatured due to a lack of traffic. In the last 30 days it has 72 views, and since January 15, 2015 it has had 473 views. When I contacted the team about this they indicated that only views from "search" count as traffic, but those from social media do not! Is this something new? I was absolutely stunned to hear this. I always thought a view was a view and that all of them counted.

I'd like some feedback from the gurus on this one. I just can't believe it!

The QAP requires search traffic. As for revenue and impressions, all traffic is treated the same. If a Hub loses featured status due to lack of search traffic, simply editing the Hub will start that period over and it will have another chance to find search visitors.

Matthew: ?- Your use of the word "unpublished".Unfeatured now means "unpublished"??????I thought unfeatured meant simply "not available to search traffic".And- if you don't have at least an 85 score -it doesn't matter anyway.right?

All of your views count when it comes to considering whether you receive earnings. They just don't count when they think about unfeaturing them for insufficient traffic. Since Google downgrades the site when they see things they don't like, HubPages is playing it safe and not showing the page to Google.

This is a good thing. It is feedback to you that there is something to improve on this page. You can look at the page and maybe see what it is about the page that Google doesn't like and fix it to make it better. Maybe there is better competition, or you have too many ads, or whatever. Maybe you need to use better keywords so Google knows what the hub is about. Or maybe it is just not a very popular topic, which means you would be better off not writing your next hub about the same topic.

I basically let my hubs that are unfeatured for traffic remain unfeatured until I have time to analyze what I need to do to improve. You CAN make minor edits and get it featured again, at least temporarily, but I think the best thing to do is to really improve the hub instead of playing the system.

HubPages wants genuine search engine traffic, not clicks from friends, because friends are not likely to be in the mood to buy. Also, social traffic is so commonly engineered - with groups of writers getting together to share their posts on Facebook etc - and HP does not want to pay for fake traffic.

It's like so many of HubPages' rules - there is always a bit of "collateral damage".

So for instance, we know that the unFeaturing system hides Hubs Google doesn't like (which is a good thing), but it also hides Hubs Google likes perfectly well, they just don't get searched much.

In the same way, the unFeaturing system ignores social traffic because of the risk of artificially generated visits, but that will mean a genuine surge won't be counted.

The thing is, though, that if a Hub is doing well on the social networks, Google will see that as a vote of confidence and give it a significant boost in the rankings, which means it will get more Google traffic. So indirectly, social traffic still has value.

Not useless. Social does what it does, if you can work it. But HP make their judgement purely on search traffic.

I used to have 300 hubs. As they became unfeatured I largely dropped them unless I thought they could be tweaked to get traffic. Otherwise, although I liked them, there was little point in endless re-editing just to regain the featuring.

Matthew just clarified this for me in an email . Basically, only search traffic counts FOR THE QAP. In other words, there seems to be some sort of ratio that says if you do not have enough search engine traffic but do have plenty of social networking traffic, your hub can still go unfeatured for lack of traffic.

Sharing on those other sites will still bring in views and income, but only IF you have enough search engine traffic to meet the QAP requirements for a given article.

Although Matthew stated here that you still get view counts and income for social networking traffic, if the hub goes unfeatured, I imagine this would be tricky to do.

I truly was shocked to get this news, and even though you can tweak to fix it, if you don't tweak well, it could happen again, and again, and...well, you get the picture.

It has been like this for a long time, Google rules our lives on the internet. I don't even know if Bing counts or not. But it is a bit ridiculous. So all you can do is hope you maintain a good spot in the Google search engine rankings.

And like Matthew said, just edit your edit and it will be featured again. Any edit will do.

As Mark Ewbie has pointed out above, this rule has existed since the unfeatured hubs were instituted. I do not think it means that social sharing does not mean much. Despite comments from Making a Mark, I have noticed that when a hub receives a lot of Pinterest views it moves up in the Google search rankings. Pinterest does seem to matter.So, does social sharing help? Definitely. I had one shared a lot last week and my income went up to almost twice what it was in the previous days. It also went up in the search rankings and gets a few hits there too. Not much, as that phrase is not searched much, but enough to have a "heartbeat", which is all HP is looking for to keep a hub featured.I still think you should follow the advice of janderson and a few others, make some changes, and keep it featured so it will still appear on Google.

So you can still earn from the views that you get from social networks. It is not exactly useless as far as earnings are concerned. However, whether your hub remains featured or not depends on search engine traffic. Specifially GOOGLE search engine traffic.

Organic search traffic has always been part of the "featured" process. This is because it will happen no matter what, unlike the "pushing" generally required for social traffic. But don't despair!

Social traffic is still very worthwhile in two ways.

1. It still pays. One hub I wrote with a friend went viral on Facebook and received around 300,000 views in just a few days. We split quite a nice payout that month!

2. Social media is a determinant of SEO value. Google tracks how many shares things get on Facebook and other social platforms and other platforms, particularly Pinterest (because you can use strong keywords there and it ranks well in Google.) Remember, if you can't find a low competition topic, you need good SEO, including backlinks, to raise your ranking. Think of social shares as a type of backlink.

So in other words, enough social shares can make you rank higher in Google and get you organic traffic.

I only found this out a couple of months ago when I queried why lots of my habs have suddenly been unfeatured due to lack of engagement. It is ridiculous as we have always been encouraged to share them on social media etc. It is getting harder all the time especially when most of my views are internal and from Pinterest and Facebook. I now have 35 hubs non featured and it seems to be growing daily. I have been here for six years and never had an unfeatured hub until six months ago. All traffic should be treated equally.

Organic traffic is ongoing, while social traffic (especially for those who just spam without much social media knowledge) is most likely to be short lived. Having that as a reason to be featured would just generate more Hubpages spam on social media.

As you'll read in my post above yours, social media does play a role in getting organic traffic, however.

Yes WryLilt, I have really stopped worrying so much about hubs that aren't featured. When I get around to it I will change a title etc to make it more search engine friendly, but I don't rush to try and get them all back up at once like I would have until a few weeks back. I am an organic gardener, so I guess I automatically like "organic" traffic.

I also have some hubs unfeatured due to traffic with a semi Black circle. But I am not worried much. I can still share them on social media and get some views often. And, I can edit them when I feel it is time now.

Here is what people need to realize. When a hub becomes unfeatured, it is essentially removed from google due to noindex. That means, you can promote to your heart's content, but none of that will matter to google. They are not going to index it.

It's a catch-22, really. You got dinged due to low google traffic, and then you can't get any google traffic as it gets removed.

Like someone said up above. The only way out of that loop is to edit it in some way. Then "something" goes back over your site and decides if it can get featured (indexed) again by google.

What is a little odd, is that this is a round about way of making you edit a hub.

They say you need traffic, but you can't get the kind of traffic they count. So you MUST edit it.

And if it passes the process, then the indexing gets turned back on by hub.

It's odd, because your hub gets featured not by getting search traffic, but by passing quality again.

I propose they call it something else. Instead of flagging it for low traffic, just tell them to edit it.

Editing it is the only way to have a chance at getting the right traffic.

I took a look and while it makes sense, in my situation I WAS getting traffic to that hub from Google. However, HP decided that I was getting too much from social media and not enough from Google. I'd like to know the ratio that makes this happen because this simply does not make sense to me. If a hub has 72 or more views in a month and 473 in 9 months, surely all of those views are not just coming from social media! I have many articles with fewer views that have not been unfeatured (This is on my newer site here started last December). Makes no sense to me.

Mine get unfeatured all the time. I simply redo the title and do some other keywords. Sometimes I have to go to google and see what others are searching when I google the subject. Then, I use that as my title instead. Most of the time, I can salvage my work and become featured again without changing any copy. It's all about what people are searching for.

The thing is, you are doing nothing for google. Google does not even look at what you've done because they have dropped it. You are essentially resubmitting it to a hub editor or bot to decide if it goes back in google. If they decide "no," then google never sees what you have done.

(shrugs) Google has been politely ignoring the bulk of my stuff for the entire time I've been Hubbing, so this isn't exactly shocking news. I gave up trying to crack the Google nut a long time ago. Obviously I'm too dumb to get a handle on that SEO stuff that you kids all seem so crazy about, it makes my brain hurt.

Social media is where it's been at for me, though obviously grabbing traffic that way is hit or miss depending on the day. If it weren't for occasional bouts of dumb luck via sudden social media "sharing" frenzies, though, my traffic would suck even worse than it does already.

Who keeps track of the kind of traffic we get - a bot? Is this in the learning center, as I never heard of it either?. What is the sense of social traffic and those icons to social places on our hubs? This has been cleared somewhat from the team - that it matters for QAP. Many of us were unaware of this rule. I wish it was different.

There is still a point in having those Share buttons - they're for your readers to share stuff they like with their friends. And if Google sees genuine readers sharing links to your Hub, they will boost your Hub higher in their search engine results.

Brakel2, the point is that is ALWAYS what those buttons were for. They were never intended so that Hubbers could artificially generate traffic by sharing with their friends or with other writers, who would visit as a favour rather than because the Hub was of genuine interest.

But, I think that hubbers can share to public so that people may come to know of some worthy content useful for them. And, then the reader may share it again to others. So, our hubbers should be positive minded and not shrug from sharing.

Social sharing is marketing the article for traffic to an available audience. Those views count for the benefit of getting paid and developing a following too. But, that is only one kind of traffic. Google is interested primarily on Organic Traffic generated from a search as both a performance measurement and for ranking a webpage and website. Organic Traffic is a result of an unpaid search.

That has the greatest value as traffic. That is a main indicator used to rank both the webpage and website on Google. Social sharing is measured, however Google places little value on it today with regard to ranking. HP seems to be reflecting that..

Related Discussions

I have been in touch with the team concerning a hub of mine that was unfeatured due to the fact that I had only HP traffic and no Google traffic and felt this was not fair because my article had been online for years and had more than 1400 total views.This morning I received the following email...

Well, when you are suffering from depression and you opened your hubpages stats then you notice that 9 of your supposed to be featured hubs got unfeatured due to lack of traffic.. Very disappointing indeed but, can you guys here suggest some tips in improving hits? I don't want to spam my facebook...

I've been writing here for quite a few years, I go back to the ancient era before the 'featured' 'not featured' declension.I have found that 'fixing' a Hub which is not featured is a total waste of time, as in a day or so, after a fix, it is back to unfeatured. I did an experiment and I can...

On a different account, somewhat "experimental" account, one of my Hubs is unfeatured. Generally my inclination was to unpublish it and move it or just delete it. But I kept it and put it in a Hub group. Meaning, if the Hubs before and after it get traffic, possibly the unfeatured one...

I am just curious, all 92 hubs of mine are featured. In your opinion, should one delete (although Featured) any hubs where the score on a particular hub has eventually dropped way down from when it was initially high at one point? Or would it be better to just unpublish and later...

What is the best way to get traffic on hubpages? Is it by the quality of your hubs or the frequency of your communication in the community? I've seen different articles that encouraged people to get noticed by being more social, claiming that that would increase interest and traffic; and then on...

This website uses cookies

As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.

This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy)

Google AdSense Host API

This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)

This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)

Facebook Login

You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy)

Maven

This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy)

We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites.

Conversion Tracking Pixels

We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service.

Statistics

Author Google Analytics

This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy)

Comscore

ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy)

Amazon Tracking Pixel

Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy)